


Sharpsburg, Georgia, USA

by sevendeadlyfun



Category: Walking Dead (comic), World War Z - Max Brooks
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-13
Updated: 2012-11-13
Packaged: 2017-11-18 14:08:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/561890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevendeadlyfun/pseuds/sevendeadlyfun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>In releasing the 50th anniversary edition of this unparalleled chronicle of what has come to be known, formally, as World War Z, we are celebrating the profound impact this work has had on our understanding of a deeply troubled part of our world’s history. </i> Not all the stories of the war are ready to be told. Not all the stories of the war are ready to be heard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sharpsburg, Georgia, USA

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ghostie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghostie/gifts).



> Many thanks to cordialcount and jactrades for being awesome betas! This work was greatly improved by their diligence and I am very grateful for all their assistance.

Publisher’s Foreward

In releasing the 50th anniversary edition of this unparalleled chronicle of what has come to be known, formally, as World War Z, we are celebrating the profound impact this work has had on our understanding of a deeply troubled part of our world’s history. In the forward to the original edition, the editors chose to highlight the expectations of future generations as part of the impetus for publishing such a remarkable selection of personal stories. As they stated so eloquently:

           

            The official report was a collection of cold, hard data, an objective “after-

            action report” that would allow future generations to study the events of

            that apocalyptic decade without being influenced by the “human factor”.

            But isn’t the human factor what connects us so deeply to our past? Will

            future generations care as much for chronologies and casualty statistics as

            they would for personal accounts of individuals not so different from them-

            selves?

 

The oral histories would be a monument to those whose bravery and determination carried us forward and an apology to those whose would never know a different world - an elegy for the certainties and simplicities of a pre-Z world.

Despite its commitment to telling the whole story of the war, shielding neither the dead nor those yet living from responsibility for the outbreak, a number of survivor accounts were not included in the original edition. The exclusions were not made lightly and the author’s original notes indicate a fierce struggle to balance a desire for honesty with a need for sensitivity. The book was published a scant ten years after victory in China and the world was not yet secure from the Z threat. The omissions are a forgivable concession to a world still deeply damaged and divided by the fear of a lingering threat. In order to spare the survivors, the author offered a kind of graceful forgetting of the war’s darkest, most terrible ordeals.

These elisions are difficult to spot as the author’s narrative skill compensates beautifully, gliding the historical eye smoothly past the questions skirted by the remaining narratives. Nonetheless, as we approach the 75th anniversary of VC Day, there are still unanswered questions about World War Z that only these excluded personal testimonies can answer. This edition will return the excluded accounts to their places in the timeline of World War Z in the author’s original formatting.  By interleaving these missing chapters into the war’s narrative, we hope to gain a fuller and possibly truer perspective of a world at war.

 

                                                                        -C. Farrell

                                                                        Professor Emeritus, Cultural History         

                                                                        University of Havana, Cuba

 

 

**SHARPSBURG, GEORGIA, USA**

**[It’s been over twelve years since the War, but Georgia remains under strict military control. Once the undead were dispatched, military forces spent a further year subduing the hardline Secessionists who comprised the majority of the state’s living population. Even the most conservative estimates place the death toll at around 78% of the pre-war population, though there is no way to be certain how many Georgians were infected by the undead virus and how many died in the Great Panic and the battle to reclaim the state. Even now, the state remains one of the least populous areas of the Eastern Seaboard.**

**The Grimes’ farm is roughly 30 miles from the nearest urban area, a purposeful remoteness meant to ensure the farm’s residents are never again caught in a swarm of humanity, living or undead. Carl Grimes is a survivor of not one, but two fallen ‘Blue Zones’. The farm is at once peaceful and terrifying in its isolation – if only because it serves as a reminder of how often the living caused as much harm as the living dead.]**

 

Blue Zones? I didn’t find out they had a name for them until years after. Hell, we didn’t even know there still was a government until they came marching in like big damn heroes. Our “Blue Zones” weren’t anything fancy or official. They were just areas of accidental humanity – a small space free of the walking dead.

**_Safe zones?_ **

Never. I mean, we thought so at first. In the early days, before we lost so many and sacrificed so much, we thought that any area free of the dead was safe. Turns out that Walkers aren’t the worst thing you can run in to once the world ends.

**[Nomenclatural differences highlight how isolated many parts of the Southern U.S. were during the War. “Zack” or “G” were military terms, not well known or used in isolated areas. Terms for zombies in the Deep South include “Walkers”, “Biters”, and even “Roamers”.]**

You gotta understand what it was like outside – the dead are everywhere. They clump in ones and twos in houses, folks who holed up and tried outlast the sickness or worse, got bit and took the sickness home to the wife and kids. The ones that break free are roaming across the countryside in twisted version of herds. You can’t stop moving or they’ll catch you – corner you. You can’t make any noise. Can’t even sneeze without drawing a pack of Walkers.

The first “Blue Zone”? It did seem safe from the outside. A little slice of gated community heaven. It had comfortable furniture, locking doors, and piles of canned goods.

It also had hundreds of dead, hidden in basements and closets and attics, wherever they had crawled off to when they were infected. Every single resident, from the very old to the very young, died and came back in that little cul-de-sac. We lost our first friend there, a woman. A mom. She had two boys and they…

**[He breaks off abruptly, his face growing suddenly hard and cold.]**

The Walkers tore her apart. I can’t tell you how many times I saw that as the years went on – a writhing body shredded to pieces under the teeth and claws of the dead. Escaping that horror becomes your only purpose, your only goal.

So any kind of sanctuary, however temporary, looks better than a gold mine. Any kind of refuge is a temptation.

**_And did you find that refuge?_ **

No. I’ve heard some stories about people who made it to safety, spent the whole war locked up tight. We never found anything like that. Not that we didn’t try.

The idea of safety was an illusion my father spent the entirety of the war chasing. He never stopped looking for the world that existed before the Walkers. It cost him his wife, his health, and something of his soul, I think.

My father tried, though. He was a state trooper. He believed in law and order, so much so that I think he had a hard time living without it. He came…unmoored, maybe? Stopped asking if something was right or wrong, and just did what he had to do to keep us alive, to keep a semblance of order in our lives.

I mean, everybody did. That’s why those “Blue Zones” fell. There’s no greater good in the face of that kind of horror, just a lot of frightened people trying to save themselves.

**_And is that what happened in the second Blue Zone?_ **

**[He nods, a quick sharp jerk of his head. His eyelid drops closed for a brief moment and he takes a deep breath.]**

Even with all the vast herds of dead, there were still a few living souls pinballing from one place to the next, trying to find food, somewhere safe to sleep. As the months come and go, resources get scarce. There’s less food. Fewer places to hide.

Even people with a safe place always wanted to be safer. To have more – hell, even just to get in a few kicks. Rapists, murders, and psychopaths made it through just as often as decent folks. Probably more often. I guess not caring who lives or dies could be a good skill set for a world full of Walkers.

That second “Blue Zone”, the prison? It didn’t fall to the Walkers. It was the living that came for us there.

Did you know I was seven years old when we first left home ? We were headed to Atlanta. We never even made it to the city limits. Turned out to be a good thing. I’m sure you know how safe Atlanta was during the Panic.

Know how many kids survived that first year? Or at all?

**_No._ **

Not many.  Kids have to have a special kind of toughness to make it through the hunger and the pain – watching people die, maybe even killing’em. Gotta be prepared to grow up quick.

I looked it up, a few years ago, through one of those survivor organizations they have now.  You know, find your missing loved ones, share your pain, that one?

**[I nod. I may not know which organization he means, but similar organizations exist all around the world.]**

I wanted to see if any of my old friends were around – the kids I grew up with, played with. Know how many I found?

None.  As far as I can tell, I’m the only kid from my hometown still alive.

I was still seven years old when a lunatic and his roving army attacked that prison and shot my mother and newborn baby sister.  At least, I hope they were shot.  There was so much – the dead and living jumbled together as the fences came down and we just ran. All of us. Just ran as fast as we could.

But that’s why we ended up here.

**[Carl waves a hand expansively around the farm.]**

After everything, this farm was the only place Dad thought was remote enough to keep us safe - to keep me safe. Dad was obsessed with making sure I’d always be okay.

**_How did he find the farm?_ **

**[Carl smiles. His remaining eye does not meet my gaze.]**

Just lucky, I guess.

So we’re rebuilding – those of us who are left. Replanting old crops, restoring the buildings. But, Dad’s last wish was that we get prepared to face any future trouble. That’s what the wall’s for –

**[He gestures towards the half-finished stone wall, as high as 20 feet in some areas, that encircles the farm.]**

From now on, nothing dead or living will be able to take our refuge from us.

 

_[Publisher's Note **:** The text below was appended by the author to the original transcript of this interview.]_

**There has been a great deal of controversy regarding the veracity of certain survivor stories. Carl Grimes’ tale of depredation at human hands, and others like it, illustrates a kind of horror that people are more comfortable pretending did not happen during the war. The undead were terrifying enough without worries about becoming the prey of the living as well. It has become easier, over time, to deny the existence of such horrors and so these stories of survival are officially and unofficially buried.**

**Additionally, there is ample reason to believe that Mr. Grimes and his father, Rick, became predators themselves as the war went on. Fragmentary reports from the early military incursions into Georgia indicate that the farm Mr. Grimes now lives on was still secure at the end of the war and inhabited by living occupants – occupants who have since vanished without a trace.**

**There are few records still extant from before the war. Mr. Grimes’ father was instrumental in securing their victory against local Secessionist elements and after the heated battles to reclaim the state, the military authorities are disinclined to ask too many questions. The dead are certainly no less dead, after all, for being killed by a living hand.  How the property changed hands and the location of the previous occupants are now only available in sealed military files.**

**In discussion after discussion with my publisher, we keep circling around how much truth we owe the world. I don’t know the answer to that question.  The world seldom has any use for truth – and I have no real desire to take on the fate of Cassandra.  It is my hope that at some point, we will be willing to take an honest look at all of the destruction the War caused. I suspect that time will be long in coming. We are so fond of our own myths.**


End file.
